MythNetvision

Warning: MythNetvision is a BETA PLUGIN. You should not expect it to work fully, if at all. There are many, many half-implemented functionalities which rely on forthcoming code in the frontend and backend, at which time they will be rewritten to do things "properly." You are welcome to file bugs against the plugin, but do not take offense or be surprised if the ticket is closed as invalid or wontfix because the code in question is slated for a rewrite.

Synopsis

MythNetvision is a plugin designed to make adding Internet video sources to MythTV fun and easy. MythNetvision consists of two components-- a search screen and a site/RSS browser screen. When installed, MythNetvision appears on the Media Library screen as the options "Search Internet Video" and "Browse Internet Video."

Grabbers posted here must not violate the source site's TOS (Terms of Service). If your script is not according to the site's TOS, please host and advertise it yourself.

Grabbers listed here do not have to be based on an API. Grabbers can be "screen scrapers" as long as they do not violate TOS. Just be prepared for more frequent support requests as site changes will often break a screen scraping grabber.

tmdb_nv.py has been removed from 0,24 and replaced by trailers.py

Hulu forbids access to anyone using a Flashplugin less than v10.0.0.32

Configuration

Requirements

The Myth Python Bindings properly installed and configured (including a functioning config.xml on all frontends).

The python-mysqldb extensions installed and working.

The python-pycurl extensions installed and working.

Python 2.5 or greater

For grabbers marked with a "Minimum MythTV version" of .24 python-lxml at least "libxml" version 2.7.2 or higher must be installed. The lxml library includes "libxml". On Ubuntu this library is automatically installed if you use Gnome. The Ubuntu 9.10 package is called "python-lxml 2.1.5-1ubuntu2". This Web site has lxml RPMs [7]

Subscribing to Search Scripts, RSS, and Site Maps

Because it is possible that many scripts will become available for MythNetvision, you must select those search and site mapping scripts that you wish to see on each frontend. RSS subscriptions are persistent across all frontends. First, you should subscribe to site grabbers and and RSS feeds you wish to view from the plugin.

Choosing Site Map Scripts

Subscription management menu options.

A view of all the installed scripts on the system.

From the Media Library menu, select the Browse Internet Video menu option and press MENU (M). Select Scan/Manage Subscriptions, then Manage Site Subscriptions. The system will spend a few moments polling the installed scripts in your MythNetvision script directory (/usr/local/mythtv/mythnetvision/scripts for many packaged installs) and present you with a menu filled with all available site map scripts. Simply select those sites you wish to be able to browse, then press escape. There will be a short pause as the configuration is saved.

Adding RSS Subscriptions

RSS Subscription management.

Adding a new RSS feed.

Editing an existing RSS feed.

From the Media Library menu, select the Browse Internet Video menu option and press MENU (M). Select Scan/Manage Subscriptions, then Manage RSS Subscriptions. If you have no RSS subscriptions yet, you will see a nearly blank screen with an option to add a new feed. Click this button to add a new RSS subscription.

On the next screen, you will see options to edit the title, URL, description, author, cover image, and download status of the feed. The only field that must be filled in is the URL. If the RSS feed is properly parsable, all of the rest of the information will be filled in and the preview image will be downloaded to ~/.mythtv/MythNetvision/sitecovers. Simply type in a video RSS feed URL, click Save, and in a few moments you should see the subscription in your list of RSS feeds.

When you are done subscribing to feeds, press Escape to return to the Video Browse Screen.

Populating RSS and Site Maps

After setting up your site maps and RSS feeds, you will need to download and parse each. To do so, select MENU (M). Select Scan/Manage Subscriptions, then Update RSS or Update Site Maps depending on which you wish to update. This process can take several minutes if you have many feeds or multiple large sites subscribed. Ultimately this updating will occur in the background, but the current release requires this manual update process to prevent freezing up the user's frontend when the updating takes place.

Use of MythNetvision

Gallery, List, and Browse Views

MythNetvision Browse View.

MythNetvision Gallery View.

MythNetvision Tree View.

Like its local counterpart MythVideo, MythNetvision has three different fully themeable views: Gallery, List, and Browse mode. Because the information used is similar to that found in MythVideo, the interface should feel comfortable for users of that plugin. To change views, select MENU (M). Select Change View, then choose from the available views.

Browsing and Viewing Videos

Note: To view online-only videos in MythNetvision, you must have MythBrowser installed.

To browse the site, simply navigate the tree like a directory structure according to your interest. When you have found a video you wish to watch, select by pressing Enter/SELECT to view it on the web. If the video is downloadable, you can also press MENU (M) and choose Save This Video. Presently, downloaded videos are save to ~/.mythtv. This will change as the plugin integrates more tightly with Myth's own recording functionality.

Searching for Videos

A MythNetvision video search.

From the Media Library menu, select Search Internet Video. You will see a list of your chosen search scripts, and a search text entry box. Simply type in a search term, select the site you wish to search, and press Enter/SELECT. After the busy dialog closes, you should see a list of search results for your term (if any were found). Each site returns different numbers of results and there may be more than one "page" of returns. To navigate through result pages, press MENU (M) and choose Next Page or Previous Page as necessary. To view or download a video, simply select it or (if downloadable) select Save This Video from the menu.

Troubleshooting

The most common issues in using MythNetvision are actually issues with the Flash Plugin. Here are some common issues.

For all crashes when the browser is running that do not fall into the below questions, please open a ticket against MythBrowser. For crashes in the MythNetvision interface, please report bugs to the users mailing list.

I don't see any sites when I try to subscribe to tree views!

This is generally an indication that you are missing a prerequisite for the script to run. See the list of prerequisites at the top of this page, and try running the script with the argument -v to see what you might be missing.

Help! I can't escape out of a video!

The Flash Plugin steals focus when the mouse hovers over it. When using the MythNetvision plugin it is best for the mouse to be in the bottom corner of the window so that you can escape from a video when it is finished.

Help! I clicked the player controls on a flash player and now I *really* can't escape out of the video!

As mentioned above, the flash player steals focus. The easiest way to fix this is to click on another focusable widget in MythBrowser like the address bar/history at the top, then escape.

I found a site which consistently crashes MythBrowser but Firefox behaves with!

First thing you might want to try is a different MythTV window resolution. Sometimes the flash player will bring down the frontend at one resolution, but not another. Please do report the bug against MythBrowser if it's easily reproduceable.

In the Youtube search/map, some videos open fullscreen, others as a web page. What gives?

The URLs returned to MythNetvision are all provided by the grabber script, and the plugin itself has no notion of what a fullscreen link is. In the case of the YouTube grabber, not all videos are allowed to be played in the "embedded" mode the the script returns. This is sometimes because the rights holders permitted it to be posted but not embedded. The grabber script makes its best effort to return what it can. Even in these cases, you can usually click the "full screen" link in the youtube flash player to get a fullscreen playback.

Expanding MythNetvision

The goal is to make MythNetvision extremely expandable and fun by relying on standardized XML/RSS format to build grabbers. If you are interested in adding support for a new site to MythNetvision, please see the MythNetvision Grabber Script Format for more details.